


sunrise in the west

by orphan_account



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Almyra Adventures, Crimson Flower Route, F/M, Mentions of Golden Deer, Mentions of Lorenz/Claude but in the past, Multi, Other: See Story Notes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 19:56:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20681051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: After the fall of Derdriu, Claude heads home with Hilda in tow.(CF/Post-CF exploration of Claude and his relationship with Hilda through their journey to Almyra.)





	sunrise in the west

**Author's Note:**

> working title for this one was "what if we were both best friends and our already intimate relationship shifted slightly to become more than platonic... and we were both bisexual.. haha.. unless"
> 
> CW: alcohol, general fire emblem war stuff, general fire emblem racism in regards to claude (mostly in ch.2), not explicit but ch.2 will have mentions of explicit content.

Derdriu falls but Claude still stands. Perhaps falls was a bit of an exaggeration- Edelgard and her troops had been surprisingly lenient in her siege, granting the port city an almost unheard of clemency amongst the storm of war. It’s no more than a strategic overture to preserve Fódlan’s premiere port city, but Claude is thankful nonetheless. He has seen firsthand the destruction Empire and Kingdom forces alike have wrought these past five years. Faerghan villages burned, Adrestian towns razed, their once mighty forests churned under the steel boots of marching soldiers.

At least home is waiting for him. It’s been over half a decade since Claude has set foot on Almyran soil. It is nothing short of poetic irony that Claude finds himself yearning for the land that once despised him, fleeing a land that had grown to love him so. 

Fódlan has become a home to Claude these past summers, but it is not his homeland, no matter how much a part of him wishes it were. Fódlan and her peoples will be alright without him, and he will survive without her. Failure was not something Claude was a stranger to.

The Alliance is crumbling, but Claude has long mapped contingencies for this eventuality. Fódlan will survive. Almyra will survive. And maybe with his help they will even go so far as to thrive.

Lysithea is alive, Hilda is alive. Raphael is doing well. Leonie and Ignatz are missing but not counted amongst the dead. Lorenz is beyond his reach, now, but if Claude knows Lorenz then he will adapt to the changes in leadership with grace and poise. He does his best not to dwell on Marianne, who had gone missing so abruptly years ago, leaving naught but rumours of a wailing beast wandering Edmund territory during moonless nights.

He sets out to the south on horseback the very same evening of Derdiu falls and does his best to shake the guilt that he is fleeing back home with his tail between his legs.

* * *

Claude is two days out from Derdriu when he hears the telltale thundering of hoofbeats storming towards his makeshift campsite. Heavy rains and the fact that Claude isn’t quite a master horseman have slowed his journey to a crawl. He draws his bow, pulls the string taut, an arrow nocked and ready to loose at whatever unfortunate bandit had decided to target him-

“Claude!” Shouts a familiar voice, sitting astride a stocky destrier that looks far too big for its rider.

She dismounts while Claude lowers his bow, sputtering. “Hilda? How did you find me?”

“I followed you? You took the busiest southbound road from Derdriu. It wasn’t terribly hard, thankfully.”

“But… why?” Claude can feel his head spinning. He has always prided himself on his people reading skills. People always wanted something, and when you figured out what made someone _tick_ you could never truly be caught off-guard. It was a lesson Claude had learned very quickly as a boy. He’d had to.

But there were some people who seemed to have made it their life’s work to prove Claude wrong at every step.

Hilda hitches her horse as she speaks, her back to him. “Well, after the Empire’s troops settled in, I had a little chat with Caspar. Since we were pals and all back in the Academy. And he told me that you had told Edelgard and the Professor you were gonna leave Fódlan, and that Ferdinand had seen you headed south from the gates. So here I am.”

“That’s the how Hilda, but not the why.”

“Why not? When I heard you were planning to run away from Fódlan I was… well, what kind of friend just lets her best bud run disappear without at least seeing him off?” Without so much as asking him permission Hilda has made herself comfortable around his flickering campfire, having no qualms about helping herself to the last of the rabbit he had snared earlier that afternoon.

Claude groans. “You- I’m running away because I’m a political hostage, Hilda, not because I feel like taking a jaunt through Alliance territory.” What _had been_ Alliance territory.

“Can’t be a hostage if they’re letting you run, I think.” Hilda folds her legs in front of her, resting her chin on her knees. “Besides, are you going to leave a lady like me to travel these dark, damp, scary old roads all on her lonesome?”

Claude’s shoulders sag. He smiles weakly and resigns himself to the spot across the campfire from Hilda. “I guess I can’t argue with that.”

* * *

Their journey south takes its inevitable course through Goneril territory. 

Hilda is trotting behind him, but Claude can practically feel the curious holes she is staring into his back. “This is my house’s land. How much more south does your family possibly live, ‘cause last I checked this is about as south as the Alliance gets. Unless we’re gonna head west along the valley road?”

Claude knew this was inevitable. That one day he would have to come clean- and _Gods_ does he hate the thought of who he is being a dirty secret- but it is a truth he has kept hidden for so long that Claude can’t bring himself to think about it without feeling guilt. Shameful. He will never be anything but proud of his Almyran heritage but a festering, guilty part of him has enjoyed playing this act these past few years just a bit too much.

“We aren’t.” 

Hilda spurs her horse to ride side by side with him. “You’re from the southern mountains? I remember my brother telling me something about mountain villages in the far south of our territory, but he said they don’t really bother with the rest of the Alliance.”

Claude grips the reins of his horse, cutting sharply to the right. “We’re heading this way,” Claude gestures, arm sweeping over the rising mountains that marked the border with Almyra. 

“Isn’t that Almyra?” Hilda muses, sounding her usual cheerful self. But she looks between him and the mountains on the horizon, biting down on her bottom lip, and Claude knows. It means she’s thinking, and not in her usual lackadaisy way, but really and truly _thinking_. It’s not a tick Claude sees her use often, and he only has the privilege of recognizing it after having known her for so many years.

“It is.”

Silence.

“Huh,” Hilda breathes, finally, after the longest minute of Claude’s life. “I guess that makes sense. Now that I’m thinking about it, I mean.”

“That’s it?” Claude stammers. “That’s all you have to say? That it makes sense?” The words come out way, way harsher than Claude wants them to, but that festering little part of him that had gotten him through his boyhood relishes in finally being allowed to see the light of day. 

It’s the first time he’s ever been mad at Hilda. It’s the first time he’s let himself be _mad_ in years, outside the sanctuary of his private chambers. Claude can feel the hot prick of tears forming in the corners of his eyes, his throat constricting and coiling like a serpent.

Hilda does an excellent job of not meeting his gaze. “I mean- like- now that you told me I’m remembering all the stuff you said to me about your parents. And the stories and… stuff.”

“It doesn’t bother you? That I’ve been lying to you? That I’m Almyran?” He counters, the squawk and quiver in his voice betraying his attempts to slip back on his usual mask of practicality.

“I think it would have a long time ago. But, uh, I don’t know a lot about Almyra or anything but I do know a little about you, and I trust you, even if you have to keep some stuff to yourself.”

Whatever anger had been building in him fizzles and burns out. “So there you have it. I’m Almyran- half at least, and I’m going back to Almyra. Probably for a long time, considering I’m not exactly in the Empire’s good graces right now. Maybe forever.”

Once he steps a foot back in Almyra Claude knows he won’t be returning to Fódlan for a long, long time.

“Do you remember, like, a year ago when I visited you for something or another in Derdriu? How we had that conversation about the camel?” Hilda begins, voice stretching in the way it does when she’s slotting each of her words carefully, stringing them along to draw you in.

There was a saying in Almyra, that unchecked curiosity would lead to all the best and worst things that could happen to a man. Claude lets himself takes the bait. “I do. You cried.”

“Ugh, forget the bit about the camel- and the crying. ‘Cause I remember after that you told me that when the war was over… which I guess it isn’t, but it kind of is for the Alliance? That I could come meet your parents. Can I still- am I allowed to take you up on that?”

There are a million things that could go wrong with bringing Hilda across the border. More variables than Claude could ever hope to prepare, even with a century to prepare. “As a friend, I’m telling you that it’s pretty much one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard.” He takes a moment to crane his neck to look back at her. “But since I’m not exactly the leader of the Alliance anymore, I can’t exactly order you not to, now can I?” He lets the fact that once they cross the border he very much would be able to give those orders once more, tenfold. They would cross that bridge when they got to it.

Hilda laughs and trots along after him and flashes him a rare, earnest smile. “Now that sounds more my dearest Claude.”

* * *

There is only one safe path for those who brave the trek through mountains separating Almyra and Fódlan. Claude had grown up, like most Almyran children on stories of brash adventurers getting lost in those desolate peaks. Foolhardy and disobedient youths who found themselves devoured by bears or demons at the end of the tale. And if those foolish adventurers were lucky enough or strong enough to avoid the wrath of the beasts and the ire of the gods, then the cold indifference of nature often swooped in to pick them off in their sleep. 

It was that indifference Claude feared the most. Hilda and he were capable warriors between the two of them. But strength only got a person so far- and no amount of training in war tactics and expertise in axe-swinging would help them ward off the bitter cold of night on the peaks.

It was for that reason Claude had convinced Hilda they would need to stop and stock up with supplies at Fódlan’s Locket.

While not exactly a bustling city, a small community of mostly mercenaries and those who sought to cater to them had flocked to the great fort nestled under the peaks in the past decade. It was an out of the way, unsafe place to live in- and it attracted more vagrants and barbarians than it did seamstresses and butchers. Claude had only been to the fort once in his life- as a boy, travelling from Almyra to Fódlan, hungry for knowledge and just a little desperate to find his place in the world. 

Of course Claude hadn’t been inside the fort proper on his first visit all those years ago like he was now. If the stories of mountain perils weren’t enough to deter particularly brave youngsters from trying to cross the border, then the tales of the great general who stood sentinel over the hostile fort on the other side did. Beware of the _ḡurūb muḥāfiẓ_, the stories would caution, the mighty Fódlani warrior who stood vigil over the borders day and night, ready to strike down invaders from land and sky alike. 

Claude watches this legendary warrior skip like a schoolgirl at the sight of Hilda, swooping her off her feet and pulling her into a fierce hug.

“Stoooooop,” Hilda whines, wiggling out of her brother’s grip. 

Holst laughs and sets her down. “My dearest baby sister has finally come to visit her big brother.” 

“Yuck,” Hilda sighs, resting a hand on her chin. “You’re as embarrassing as ever.”

If Holst is bothered by her words he doesn’t let it slip. “Now if we’re talking about embarrassing moments, I can always share the story from the Saint Seiros day when you were… eight? Nine? The one where you-”

Hilda makes a high pitched noise. Claude bites his bottom lip to stop the stupid smile creeping onto his face. “No! No, that’s not something we talk about. Especially not when my friend is here.”

It’s only just then that Holst seems to realize Claude exists. “Oh? I’m going to guess that you’re von Riegan, then?” Holst greets him, though the warmth he greeted Hilda with has fled somewhere far, far away. The shift in his disposition is so abrupt it is enough to throw even him for a loop, and Claude takes a moment to smooth out the anxiety swirling in his stomach.

“That would be me, last I checked. Claude von Riegan, grandson of Duke Oswald von Riegan.”

“Hm,” Holst humms, glancing between Hilda and himself thoughtfully. “How wonderful to finally meet you in person, former Duke Riegan. I’ve heard enough stories about you to fill a novel. Maybe two.”

“Good ones, I hope?” Claude forces himself to chuckle.

“They were certainly entertaining.” 

Hilda, bless her, takes that as her cue to intervene. “Ahem,” she coughs, tilting her head questioningly at the two of them. “Are you boys going to posture all evening or can we sit down for dinner?”

Claude shovels his food down his throat as fast as polite manners allow him to and then excuses himself to the room that has been prepared for him. He leaves the Gonerils to their comfortable conversation, sprawled out on top of the freshly made sheets in his temporary room, silently staring up at the stone ceiling. The sunlight filtering through the windows fades into nothingness, and Claude is left alone in the candlelight with his thoughts, the weeks of sleeping on the forest floor catching up to him all at once. 

Someone knocks on his door. The banging echoes through the empty stone room like a dirge.

“Claude, it’s me, you seriously can’t be sleeping already. We aren’t that old yet.” Hilda chatters outside his door. Claude groans, but finds himself grinning despite it all.

“I’m not asleep, just resting my eyes. You can come in.”

The door opens and Hilda’s footsteps echo across the room. Claude shifts himself onto his side to watch her as she perches herself on the edge of his bed, shuffling herself to sit cross-legged at his side. She’s changed out of her usual clothes into a loose set of nightclothes, deep black in color with embroidered flora adorning the sleeves and collar of her shirt. It’s fancy enough that Claude imagines it could sell for enough gold to buy out this whole town.

Hilda reaches up to fiddle with her hair, gathering the loose strands up and pulling them back into a loose ponytail. “My brother said he’d set us up with supplies for a trip to Almyra,” Hilda prods, looking down at him.

Claude props his head up with his elbow, leaning into his palm. “That’s… unexpected. I thought for sure we were going to have to steal away in the night. I even had a plan in the works.”

“Well I can’t say he was _happy_ about me going to Almyra with you, but I was pretty stubborn about, and I know how to work my brother, so eventually he just sort of switched gears to making sure we have supplies for every conceivable situation.”

“He was particularly unhappy about the ‘with me’ part, huh?” Holst had been just barely cordial with him this evening, bound more by social etiquette than anything else, so Claude couldn’t say he was surprised.

Hilda shrugs. “He… well he’s an older brother. I think it’s mostly because he doesn’t like the idea of another man in my life,” she winks, insincerely.

“Or he doesn’t want his sister off galavanting in an enemy country with the man who just lost the Alliance.”

It’s correct enough. If Claude were in Holst’s place, he would hate himself. Hate the idea of some upstart boy with a face just a little too similar to the ones that stare back across the border galavanting his way into power for a country he had only been in for a handful of years. Only able to watch as the country he has spent his life fighting for is lost to war and infighting, the boy who let them be defeated fleeing back across the border to safety, while the rest of them are left to become the Alliance’s gravekeepers.

“Claude, if you couldn’t win… no one could have.” It’s probably true, but maybe that’s what bothers Claude the most. That his best and Edelgards best had gone toe to toe, and in the end she and Teach had grasped victory in their talons. 

He drops his arms down back onto the bed, rolling over onto his back. “Maybe in another life, yeah?” 

“Yeesh. You’re really off today, aren’t you,” Hilda begins, reaching out to him. Her hand settles on top of his head and she makes an awkward show of petting him for a while. Claude says nothing, relaxing himself into her bizarre attempt at consolation. “It’s kind of weird to say it, and don’t like, take this the wrong way… but I think it’s probably really good that you’re letting yourself be all sulky like this.”

“Uh-huh.”

Hilda pulls away from him, unfurling her legs and off the mattress. “Well, I guess I’m one to talk, right?” She waves to him as she exits the room, pink hair flickering in the candlelight. He rolls himself back onto his side, back to the door, and wills himself into a fitful rest.

* * *

The nights up atop the jagged mountain peaks are as harsh as they are fabled, it turns out. Hilda and himself are forced to set up camp at the first warning of sundown. Their fire is consistently weak and prone to smothering itself, and on the second night of their journey it rains so ferociously more than half of their foodstuff is waterlogged and inedible by morning. After a week of nightly batterings by frigid gales and wild tempests, the canvas of their shared tent is starting to fray. 

Claude huddles in that threadbare shelter with Hilda at his side and a bottle of Ordelian Whiskey in hand.

“Thank the Goddess for alcohol,” Hilda chatters, already making a move to snatch the whiskey bottle out of his hands for another drink.

Claude holds it up just out of her reach. It’s easy, because Hilda is hilariously small, something he’s never noticed before. The wonders of alcohol. “You’re too little Hilda, and if you have even another sip you might… you can’t have anymore.” Claude asserts. He sets the whiskey down in the far corner of their tent away from Hilda, who groans.

“Claude I’m thirsty and m’cold and you’re not helping me,” She whines, slamming her head into his chest in defeat.

Claude wiggles himself further under their furs. “I’m helping you by not letting you die of alcohol poisoning, _kuček_. Hilda. _kuček_ Hilda.”

“Huh?” Hilda grumbles, lifting her head up off his chest to stare down at him. “Dunno what you just said, but 'm bored so lets do something since you aren’t gonna lemme drink anymore. Asshole.”

Claude considers disentangling himself from Hilda so he can breathe properly at this point but he’s really, really cold so he lets her stay perched on top of him like a gargoyle because he’s just that good of a friend. “Mkay. How about we play the one where I say some stuff and it’s true or fake and then you have to know the fake one?” The name of the game escapes him, but Claude has a faint memory of playing that once or twice during late night study sessions-turned-hangouts with Sylvain and whatever girls he had roped into following him that night. 

Hilda mumbles with her face buried into his chest. “Kay, you gotta go first though ‘cause you came up with it.”

“Fair enough. So my three things are… One, I had a phobia of cats as a kid because one bit me and I almost died. Two, my first crush was a son of some merchant and to win him over, I tried to show him my snakeskin collection. And three, yellow is actually my favorite color and it was really fortunate for everyone I wound up in the Golden Deer.”

Lifting her head off his chest, Hilda looks around their tent with her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “Ok the cat thing… yeah the cat thing has to be fake. Cats are adorable, and there were lots of them at the monastery and you weren’t scared of them.”

“The details are important. I said as a _kid_ I was afraid of them. Not anymore.”

“Wait, what? So the color thing is the lie? What’s your favorite color then? Mine’s pink, if you were wondering,” Hilda rambles at him through a poorly stifled yawn.

“How are you so certain I wasn’t lying about the merchant’s son thing? And it’s green, by the way.” 

She giggles, dropping her head back down on top of him with a snort. “Uh… you had a crush on Lorenz for like a whole year. It was super obvious and super tacky, by the way.”

Claude puts a hand to his face, knuckle rubbing against his cheek sheepishly. “Not… yeah, not my finest hour. Or year.”

“Lorenz!” Hilda cackles, fingers curling into the loose fabric of his nightwear as she laughs. “Oh, Claude. Claude. Hmmm…” She stops abruptly, squinting down at him. “Yeah, no way that would’ve worked out.”

“Really now?” Claude breathes, fighting back the urge to tilt his head away from her. She’s staring down at him really, really intensely now, and Claude has to wonder if he’s just said something stupid and then immediately forgotten what it was in his drunken state.

Hilda keeps staring, keeps on holding tight to the bunched up fabric of his nightshirt between her fingers. “You are… So, so out of his league, Claude.”

“Lorenz is a good guy, Hilda. I mean maybe a little hard to get to know but totally a good guy under it all. He might have had an… unfortunate haircut back in the Academy but you and me both know he’s got a secret heart of a puppy under that slimy exterior of his. His dedication to his family is respectable, as are his convictions to m-”

His words are cut off into a kiss, Hilda leaning down into him with more force than her size would suggest. It’s over in an instant, because Claude scrambles back and pulls his face off of hers instead of leaning into it. His head and stomach are swimming even through the haze of drink.

Hilda backs off, averting her gaze and unclenching her fingers. 

“I…” Claude starts, feeling really, really stupid about himself at that moment. “You’re really drunk Hilda. Me too, so I really don’t want to… I can’t really, uh, I don’t think… you’re my best friend Hilda. No- no, not that I don’t think that you’re my best friend, but more like. Hmm. I love you a lot but I just… I have stuff I need to do and responsibilities and I don’t want to- you’re really important to me, did I mention that? I…”

“Trying t’ sleep,” Hilda groans over his words. “S’fine being your best pal. It’s really fun.”

Claude wants to say something back but he can’t manage to squeeze anything out of his traitorous throat and by the time he can feel his stomach settling Hilda is breathing evenly at his side, silent and asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> the words in other language are allegedly in farsi, but like, google farsi, so they probably arent accurate. claudes story hopefully refers to holst as the "sunset guardian/guardian of the sunset" given his position to the west of almyra, and he calls hilda "tiny/little/small". if any1 reads this and speaks farsi feel free to correct me.
> 
> Unbetad so expect some ninja edits to this here and there.


End file.
